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"It's Saturday Night Live!" will forever be the four words we associate with Don Pardo, announcer for the NBC variety show for nearly 40 years, who passed away Monday night at the age of 96 (via CBS News). Since 1975 — with only a single season-long hiatus in the early '80s — Pardo's inimitable timber introduced us to SNL’s stars, featured players, musical guests, and episode hosts, earning a permanent residence in the pop culture realm’s collective auditory cortex. But there’s more to the man than his weekly exclamations from the announcing booth at Studio 8-H. Pardo’s 75-year-long career took him to a multitude of interesting corners that we so often overlook:
Let the Games BeginA staff fixture at NBC, Pardo announced the original iterations of many of its game shows, including The Price Is Right (from 1956 to ’63) and Jeopardy! (from ’64 to ’75), as well as later programs Three on a Match, Winning Streak, and Jackpot! between ’71 and ’75.
Happy Turkey Day!For many years, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade presented its army of inflatable cartoon characters with the gravitas of Pardo’s smooth baritone. Pardo announced the annual event for NBC straight up through 1999.
NBC via Getty Images
And That’s the NewsPardo boasted a longstanding career as a news broadcaster, both on radio and television; he started out as a World War II reporter for NBC Radio. On the date of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Pardo announced the tragedy to NBC’s television audience, becoming one of the first parties to report on the death of the 35th president.
He Also Had a Musical SidePardo proved his tastes in music to be rather esoteric when he teamed with the likes of Frank Zappa and Weird Al Yankovic for performances and recordings. Pardo first collaborated with Zappa in 1976 on a rendition of “I’m the Slime,” and then again joined forces with the innovative rock artist for his live album Zappa in New York in ’78.
Five years later, Pardo would pay homage to his game show era by contributing vocally to Weird Al’s “I Lost on Jeopardy” as well as appearing in the music video.
Of Course, He Had His Woody CredAn honorary New Yorker, Pardo managed to work his way into the filmography of Woody Allen, appearing in the 1987 comedy Radio Days as a host of the Name That Tune parody “Guess That Tune.” His acting career beyond the Allen picture includes Honeymoon in Vegas and the John Ritter comedy Stay Tuned.
And He Could Take a JokePardo was a hard worker until the very end — flying back and forth between his home in Arizona and New York City every week to announce episodes of SNL — but was hardly a man who took himself too seriously. This is evident by his self-parodying appearances on The Simpsons and SNL vet Tina Fey’s 30 Rock.
Naturally, we will always remember Pardo best for his work on Saturday Night Live, but there is clearly a lot more to celebrate about the man, his indomitable career, and his unmistakable voice.

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Actress Mayim Bialik has reunited with her Blossom co-stars Joey Lawrence, Jenna Von Oy and Michael Stoyanov, 19 years after the hit show went off-air. The castmates came together on Monday (16Jun14) to shoot new promotional material for the teen sitcom, which has been picked up for syndication by bosses at America's Hub Network.
The show, about a young girl adjusting to life with her brothers and father after her mother abandons the family, originally ran from 1991 to 1995. Bialik, who now stars in popular comedy The Big Bang Theory, shared a photo of the gang back together on Twitter.com and joked about their youthful appearances.
In the accompanying caption, she wrote, "#blossomreunion thanks to @HubTVNetwork in effect! Um... @joeylawrence @MikeStoyanov @JennavonOy. We still look like young whippersnappers..." Responding to the post, Lawrence tweeted, "So awesome being with u (sic) all again. Feels like no time has passed. Love you all".

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It's the beginning of the summer, which means it's time for Hollywood's biggest and brightest stars to make their way to the French Riviera for the Cannes Film Festival, while the rest of us look on with jealousy. But just because you didn't snag a ticket to the most glamorous film event of the year, that doesn't mean you can't keep up with all of the big films premiering over the next two weeks. To help you stay on top of things, we're running down the biggest films that premiered in competition at the festival, including the latest from David Cronenberg, Steve Carell's potential Oscar vehicle and the high-profile movie that opened to worse reviews than Grace of Monaco.
Lost RiverActor Ryan Gosling's dreamy and feverish directorial debut follows Billy (Christina Hendricks) and her son Bones (Ian De Caestecker) as they struggle to survive the economically devastated Detroit-like city of Lost River. Billy goes to desperate lengths to keep her childhood home while Bones resorts to scavenging from local abandoned houses, but a local madman named Bully (Matt Smith) has claimed the entire neighborhood for himself. Lost River screened in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes and was met with mostly boos from the audience. Many critics have cited Gosling's ambition, but have accused the first time director of being derivative of other, more seasoned filmmakers.
“'Lost' is indeed the operative word for this violent fairy tale about a fractured family trying to survive among the ruins of a city overrun by thugs, sexual predators and other demons, nearly all of them cribbed from the surreal cinematic imaginations of other, vastly more intuitive filmmakers. It’s perversely admirable to the extent that Gosling has certainly put himself out there, sans shame or apology, but train-wreck fascination will go only so far to turn this misguided passion project into an item of even remote commercial interest." - Justin Chang, Variety
"The visuals are undeniably dreamy, but they mostly seem borrowed from other filmmakers’ dreams. There’s a Twin Peaks feel of an alternate, off-kilter world to the whole thing, one in which arbitrary, quasi-surrealistic images barge in, sometimes for symbolic reasons, at other times arbitrarily. Many of them relate to ruin and decay—civic, environmental, bodily—and there is a sense of the ghosts who occupy both the ruined homes and the underwater town. As beautifully presented as the imagery is, however, none of it registers deeply because it all seems like borrowed goods. It’s flashy enough to engage the eye, but the experience is akin to flipping through a gorgeous art photography book featuring an assortment of artists rather than one. " - Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter
Maps to the Stars David Cronenberg’s latest film follows Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), a young woman who was disfigured in a fire, and moves to LA in an attempt to reconnect with her family… even if they don’t want to reconnect with her. Along the way she befriends a limo driver (Robert Pattinson) and gets a job working for a washed-up movie star Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore), who is attempting to land the lead role in a remake of a film that once starred her mother (Sarah Gadon). Meanwhile, Havana's shrink (John Cusack) is raising tween megastar Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird), who at 13 is fresh out of rehab and whose fame allows him to get away with just about anything.
“If Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve and Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon took a bunch of prescription medication, had a two-day three-way and conceived a child, nine months later the child would look something like "Map To The Stars. […] Hollywood's seemed pretty rotten from the off in the film, but as Cronenberg exposes its stinking maggoty core of ghosts, sexual deviancy and cover-ups, the film takes on a nightmarish K-hole tone of its own, while remaining darkly, bitterly funny to the last. LA's rarely seemed as unappealing on screen, which is quite the feat.” – Oliver Lyttelton, The Playlist
“David Cronenberg's new film here at Cannes is a gripping and exquisitely horrible movie about contemporary Hollywood – positively vivisectional in its sadism and scorn. It is twisted, twisty, and very far from all the predictable outsider platitudes about celebrity culture. The status-anxiety, fame-vertigo, sexual satiety and that all-encompassing fear of failure which poisons every triumph are displayed here with an icy new connoisseurship, a kind of extremism which faces down the traditional objection that films like this are secretly infatuated with their subject.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Foxcatcher Based on the true story of the murder of wrestler Dave Schultz, Foxcatcher has emerged from the festival as a major player in next year's Oscars race. Channing Tatum stars as Mark Schultz, an Olympic wrestler who has long lived in the shadow of his older brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo). When Mark gets an invitation from multimillionaire John E. duPont (Steve Carell) to move into his home and train at his facilities, his relationship with his new benefactor turns out ot have dangerous consequences.
"Despite its hefty 134-minute running time, “Foxcatcher” doesn’t have an ounce of the proverbial narrative fat [...] Crucially, this meticulously researched picture feels as authentic in its understanding of character as it does in its unvarnished re-creation of the world of Olympic sports in the late ’80s; rarely onscreen has the art of wrestling, centered around the violent yet intimate spectacle of men’s bodies in furious collision, provided so transfixing a metaphor for the emotional undercurrents raging beneath the surface." - Justin Chang, Variety
"Centered on an astonishing and utterly unexpected serious turn by Steve Carell, this beautifully modulated work has a great deal on its mind about America's privileged class, usurious relationships, men's ways of proving themselves, brotherly bonds and how deeply sublimated urges can assert themselves in the most unsavory ways." - Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter
Saint LaurentFocused on the life and career of Yves Saint Laurent (Gaspard Ulliel), the film charts the designer's rise to fame and his relationship with his lover and business partner, Pierre Berge (Jeremie Renier). Written and directed by Bertrand Bonello, it's one of several high-profile biopics in contention at Cannes this year, although similarities to another recent Saint Laurent movie may have been its downfall with critics, as it only earned mixed reviews.
"The point could be to show what it all cost Saint Laurent - and yet it doesn't actually seem to have cost him that much: he grows to a pampered old age, not very conspicuously interested in anyone or anything but his dog. Perhaps it is that they are entirely without affect, like a tableau by Warhol, who writes Saint Laurent a fan letter here. Finally, Saint Laurent is a well made but bafflingly airless and claustrophobic film, like being with fashion's very own Tutenkhamen , living and dying inside his own richly appointed tomb - and sentimentally indulged to the last." - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Perhaps through time this hallucinatory quasi-dream of a biopic will grow in stature, but as first impressions go, the film loves itself so much it renders itself beautiful, but utterly shallow. The messy structure, which includes further time jumps in the future – a random introduction of an older Saint Laurent, the Pierre Berge-handling business affairs at irregular intermissions between exploration of a bored genius, and animal cruelty in the form of a pug OD’ing on pills – doesn’t do the film any favors." - Nikola Grozdanovic, The Playlist
Ego Film Arts/The Film Farm
The Captive Atom Egoyan's latest film centers on the kidnapping of a teenage girl, and the torture that her captor puts her parents through. Eight years after Cass (Alexia Fast) disappeared, her parents (Ryan Reynolds and Mireille Enos) discover disturbing new evidence that leads them to believe that she's still alive, and they desperately attempt to get the police to take their case seriously. The film, which was perceived by many to be a comeback vehicle for both Reynolds and Eyogan, premiered to largely negative reviews, putting it up against Grace of Monaco and Lost River for the biggest disappointment of the festival.
"The plotting here is so hopelessly tangled, clichéd, and bereft of psychological complexity that it's difficult to care what happens to any of these people. That goes even for poor Cass, who seems at times to have a touch of Stockholm syndrome but otherwise just looks bored sitting around on the pink princess bed she's outgrown. As Mika's antics become more bizarre and her distraught dad out of nowhere starts outsmarting her tormentors, the movie goes from uninvolving to risible." - David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
"Any other year, in any other context, The Captive would simply be another overcooked rote thriller that, like so many other films in this genre, totally loses the run of itself in the final act (seriously, Kevin Durand goes so Bond villain that he even has a female henchperson sidekick). [...] Instead, right down to the nearly synonymous title we get a lurid, silly Prisoners me-too (and that film itself was far from flawless) in which the only additions are a flashback-and-forward structure that never works, the kind of contrivance in which a laptop camera accidentally left transmitting records a crucial conversation (perfectly framed) and a crude, distastefully regressive subtheme which suggests that well, of course that this is what happens to girls and to women (even successful, intelligent, independent women) when they are left alone even for a moment by their menfolk." - Jessica Kiang, The Playlist
The Homesman Co-written, directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones, The Homesman follows a claim jumper and a pioneer woman (Hilary Swank), who accompany three insane women - played by Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and Sonja Richter - across the border into Iowa. Like several other Cannes contenders, the film has already been receiving awards buzz, thanks to Jones' direction and a powerhouse lead performance from Swank.
"Unlike other actor-directors, Jones never seems to indulge excess on the part of his cast. Though the characters are strong, the performances are understated. Even the three ladies settle into a state of near-catatonia after awhile, rather than indulging their various “hysterias.” In the past, people have whispered about Jones’ attitudes toward women; with this film, he says a thing or two on the subject with a sensitivity that comes as a welcome surprise." - Peter Debruge, Variety
"This is a frontier tale with something of the classic style of Stagecoach or 3:10 to Yuma, but also the consciously grimmer, austerer feel of Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff and indeed Lee Jones's own The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. And it is a frontier tale which is swimming against the generic current: most stories like these are about heading west. This is about a trudge in the opposite direction." - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
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Neil Patrick Harris' starring role in the Broadway debut of cult rock musical Hedwig And The Angry Inch has won rave reviews by critics, who have hailed his performance as "fabulous", "outrageous" and "blazingly entertaining". The How I Met Your Mother actor has returned to the Great White Way to star in the musical about a rock 'n' roll band fronted by a transgender East German singer.
The revival of the 1998 Off-Broadway show opened at the Belasco Theatre on Tuesday (22Apr14) and critics have heaped praise on star actor Harris.
Mark Kennedy from the Associated Press writes that Harris "simply crushes it", adding, "Rarely does a role fit a performer so well. Harris is funny, twisted, poignant, outrageous, bizarre, silly and very, very human."
Elysa Gardner from USA Today also praises director Michael Mayer, writing, "Harris, under Michael Mayer's razor-sharp direction, serves it with a blazingly entertaining and ultimately moving performance. The humour here is darker and rawer than the material that has endeared Harris to TV audiences, but he brings the same affable, slightly naughty charm."
Ben Brantley from the New York Times could not fault the actor's ability, adding, "Harris is in full command of who he is and, most excitingly, what he has become with this performance. That's a bona fide Broadway star, the kind who can rule an audience with the blink of a sequined eyelid."
David Rooney from The Hollywood Reporter also praised the actor, writing, "Harris is beyond fabulous, holds nothing back and plays it any way but safe in Michael Mayer's exhilarating production."
The opening night was attended by a host of stars including Hollywood actor Sam Rockwell, acting couple Justin Long and Amanda Seyfried, Yoko Ono, U.S. Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and Mad Men star Christina Hendricks.

Acting icon Robert De Niro and crooner Michael Buble were honoured for their philanthropic efforts at Muhammad Ali's Celebrity Fight Night on Saturday (12Apr14). The 20th annual event attracted stars from movies, music and sports to the Phoenix, Arizona gala, which raises funds in support of the legendary boxer's fight to find a cure for Parkinson's disease.
The Raging Bull star was given the night's big prize, the 2014 Muhammad Ali Celebrity Fight Night Award, which was handed to De Niro by his Analyze This co-star Billy Crystal.
Singer Buble was also presented with the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award by country artist Reba McEntire, who served as the host for the evening.
Ali himself was not able to attend his event due to a stomach bug, but other celebrities, including Sex and the City's John Corbett and politician Robert Kennedy, Jr., were on hand to support the cause.
Country music siblings The Band Perry took the stage to entertain attendees, while Buble, McEntire and Kenny Rogers also performed.
A live auction was also held during the event, where a VIP treatment package at the premiere of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 sold for $15,000 (£8,967), while two lucky bidders each paid $500,000 (£298,918) to have dinner with McEntire in her home. But the biggest draw of the night was a dinner with De Niro, Crystal and former New York Yankees general manager Joe Torre, which went for $1 million (£597,836).
Over $8 million (£4.8 million) was raised during the event, boosting the total raised in the 20 years of Celebrity Fight Night to $95 million (£56.8 million). Funds will benefit the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center and Medical Center's Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, as well as other charities.

Sir Elton John and his partner David Furnish celebrated the superstar's 67th birthday on Friday (28Mar14) by hosting the grand opening of their new Las Vegas bar. The Rocket Man hitmaker and film producer Furnish were joined by actor Nicolas Cage, legendary producer Quincy Jones, rock matriarch Sharon Osbourne and her daughter Kelly, The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers, actress Britt Ekland and funnyman David Spade, among others for the launch of FIZZ Las Vegas.
The Champagne lounge, a collaboration between Furnish and nightlife gurus Michael Greco and Steven Kennedy, is located next to Caesars Palace's famed Colosseum theatre, where Elton is currently performing a Sin City residency.
Furnish tells USA Today, "Fizz is an extension of our personal style. Spending so much time in Las Vegas with Elton's performance schedule, we wanted a space that would reflect our personal style and become an extension of the way we entertain at home."
And he tells U.S. breakfast show Today, "Once people are inside, it's very small and intimate... We bring the lights down to make it really, really chic and warm and welcoming. It's very much an extension of the way we would do things."
Elton turned 67 on 25 March (14).

Bryan Cranston won rave reviews for his performance in All The Way after its opening night on Broadway on Thursday (06Mar14). The Breaking Bad actor impressed critics with his portrayal of America's 36th President, Lyndon B. Johnson, in the Bill Rauch directed play about the struggle to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Cranston's performance was hailed as "effortlessly captivating" by theatre critic Mark Kennedy at Associated Press, while Joe Dziemianowicz at the New York Daily News called him "a force to be reckoned with".
USA Today's Elysa Gardner writes, "Strutting gut-first and affecting a gruff Southern drawl, the leading man delivers the emphatic, crowd-pleasing performance that the play, and Bill Rauch's vigorous direction, require, while also making Johnson affecting as a flesh-and-blood human being."
Hermione Hoby at Britain's Daily Telegraph writes, "The play might be a star vehicle but its star delivers. It's thrilling to watch Cranston go from his default, comic stance of forward-thrust hips and slumped shoulders, to fearsome, chest-puffed, confrontation."
A star-studded audience was in attendance, which included Gayle King, Josh Lucas, Jennifer Morrison, Chris O'Dowd and Hank Azaria.
The production - which also stars This Is Spinal Tap's Michael McKean - is due to run until 29 June (14).

Universal Pictures via Everett Collection
Seventeen years ago, Harrison Ford grumbled four simple words that defined a genre, a demographic, and a country: "Get off my plane." In a pre-9/11 world, there was no shortage of jingoistic glee in a movie like Air Force One, in which a man's man American president doled out justice to a militia of Russian loyalist terrorists who made the silly mistake of attempting to hijack his flight home from Moscow. In 2014, we don't have the luxury of facing a plotline like this with reckless merriment. There's a damp gravity to the premise behind movies like Non-Stop, which in another time would have been nothing more than Taken on a Plane. But rigidly conscious of the connotations that attach to a story about a hijacking of a civilian international flight into John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, Non-Stop doesn't play too fast and loose. It still plays, and has some good fun doing so, but carefully.
From the getgo, we're anchored into the grim narrative of Liam Neeson's U.S. Air Marshall Bill Marks, who settles his demons with a healthy spoonful of whiskey. A dutiful officer even when liquored up, Marks eyeballs every nameless face in London's Heathrow Airport, silently introducing the bevvy of characters who'll come into play later on. After takeoff, Marks finds himself on the unwitting prowl for the anonymous party who's attempting to take down the red-eye through a series of manipulative text messages, well-timed threats, and clandestine killings. Chatty passenger Julianne Moore and flight attendant Michelle Dockery join Marks in his efforts to identify the mysterious criminal before the entire aircraft falls to his or her whims. So less Taken, more Murder, She Wrote.
Universal Pictures
Our roundup of suspects challenges our (and their) preconceived notions, and quite laughably — most vocal among Neeson's fellow passengers are a white beta-male school teacher (Scoot McNairy), a black computer engineer with an attitude of entitlement (Nate Parker), a softspoken Middle Eastern surgeon whose headwear gets more than a few focal shots (Omar Metwally), a middle-aged white businessman whose latest account landed him more than your house is worth (Frank Deal), an irate black youngster draped in irreverence (Corey Hawkins), and a white, bald, machismo-howling New York cop who secretly accepts his gay brother (Corey Stoll). Just a few talking heads short of Do the Right Thing, Non-Stop manages to goof on each man's (notice that they're all men — Moore, Dockery, and a barely-in-the-movie Lupita Nyong’o are kept shy of the action for most of the film) distaste for and distrust of one another as they each try to sidle up to, or undermine the harried Marks.
Non-Stop plays an interesting game with its characters and its audience, simultaneously painting the ignorance of its characters with a thick coat of comedy while pointing its finger straight out at us with accusations that we, too, thought it was whoever we just learned it wasn't, and for all the wrong reasons. "Shame on you!" Non-Stop chides, adding, "But let's keep going, this is fun!"
It is fun — that's the miraculous thing. Without any "Get off my plane"s or "Yippee ki yay"s, Non-Stop keeps its action genre silliness in check (okay, there is a moment involving an airborne gun that'll institute some serious laugh-cheers), investing all of its good time in the game of claustrophobic Clue that we can't help but enjoy. It sacrifices some of its charm in a heavy-handed third act, tipping to one side of what was a pretty impressive balancing act up until that point. But its falter is not one that drags down the movie entirely. Fun and excitement are restored, sincerity is maintained, and even a few moments of sensitivity creep their way through. We might not live in a world of President Harrison Fords any longer, but Air Marshall Liam Neesons could actually be a step up.
3.5/5
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Singer/songwriter Ray Kennedy has died, aged 67. A member of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand house band, the multi-instrumentalist hit the road as a touring members of groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, Gene Krupa, Little Richard and Otis Redding.
He hit it big in the mid-1960s after signing a deal with Atlantic Records as half of the duo Jon and Ray.
Kennedy and partner Jon Misland worked with producers like Phil Spector and Arif Mardin, but failed to release an album.
The singer went solo after working with Group Therapy on two late 1960s albums, and found success as a songwriter, working with the likes of the Beach Boys (Sail On, Sailor).
He also co-founded KGB with Barry Goldberg and Michael Bloomfield.
Kennedy spent the 1980s as a solo artist and session musician, contributing to the music for the 1988 Olympics and touring with Aerosmith and the Michael Schenker Group.
He also worked with Englebert Humperdinck, Wayne Newton and Mick Fleetwood - he co-wrote These Strange Times for Fleetwood Mac.